Just watch this space Author: Joanne McCarthy Date: 25/07/2005 Publication: Newcastle Herald
THE next time you can't find a car park in the Newcastle East area, you might want to think about Dick Marr and the vanishing visitor car parking spaces.
Marr, a planner with Lake Macquarie and Newcastle City councils for more than 20 years, bought one of 29 units in the 1 Scott Street development.
He was worried about visitor parking after receiving an invitation to buy an extra parking space, so he wrote to Newcastle City Council. On January 31 this year he received a reply which said development consent included 16 visitor spaces.
Because the strata plan of subdivision was prepared, certified and registered by a private certifier, Marr was advised to take the matter up with him.
He did, and asked the principal certifying authority to advise on "the availability, location, identification and access arrangements for visitor parking".
In a letter to Newcastle council general manager Janet Dore in February, Marr wrote that security doors were being placed across spaces he understood were visitor spots. He raised concerns that visitor spaces were being sold.
In her reply Dore said the certifier advised the council a notice had been served on the developer to remove any physical barriers across the visitor spaces.
"It should be noted that once any physical structure is removed from the subject parking space the communal access could be achieved irrespective of the ownership," Dore wrote.
The council wrote to the developer advising a formal process was needed for changes "so as to allocate visitor parking to individual units", in other words, to put what should be a common facility into private use.
The letter advised that visitor parking was provided on unit developments to "minimise kerbside parking in the adjacent public road as a result of the proposed development".
By this stage the NSW Ombudsman's office was involved. It advised Marr the council and private principal certifying authority had sent a draft order to the developer noting it would be issued if certain work was not carried out.
The Ombudsman's letter noted both the council and the certifier had taken appropriate action.
An internal memo between council officers which appears on the development file makes interesting reading.
The memo noted one certifier "seems to be of the view that council had decided that it no longer required visitor parking via the processing of modifications to the development consent. I explained to (the certifier) that this was not the case."
The memo was sent by the council officer Janet Dore advised Dick Marr to contact if he had any more concerns about the matter. The memo noted the council had not received an application to modify the original consent for 16 spaces.
"However, the documentation relating to this issue may not be entirely conclusive and it is full of inconsistencies," the officer said.
The memo noted the original approved DA plans lacked a formal "note" for visitor parking spaces although a condition of consent "requires that visitor parking bays be clearly indicated by signs or markings".
It went on to list the "inconsistencies" and concluded the "only real course open to the council" for taking formal action about the parking allocation was to have the strata certificate issued by a private certifier declared null and void.
But the likelihood of that action settling anything was killed in the next sentence.
"I believe this would be a difficult case to win."
Dick Marr read the memo and fired off a few more letters, one of which went to Janet Dore. He took issue with her earlier suggestion that private ownership of a visitor parking space would not preclude common use.
"No sensible person would expect an individual to purchase a parking space just to permit communal use of that space by all who so desired," he wrote.
Marr reminded Dore that when the council approved 1 Scott Street it deflected community concern about on-street parking by approving 16 visitor spaces.
On June 6 Dore replied that parking, "communal or otherwise", was not the council's responsibility because it was "not the certifying authority". The owners' corporation had to sort it out, she said. Marr thinks otherwise and is talking to a solicitor.